The Guernsey law firm Babbé has added fund-establishment specialist Robert Varley to its team.

Varley joins the Channel Island firm from Walkers’ Dubai office, where he served as managing partner. During his career, Varley has focused on open and closed-end investment structures—particularly private equity, real estate and infrastructure funds. He also worked in the Middle East for five years, specializing in Islamic funds.

Guernsey, a popular location for offshore companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, saw a 39.7% rise in funds managed or administered from the island in 2010, bringing total assets under management to £257.4 billion.

Babbé operates in the areas of corporate and commercial, trust and fiduciary, funds, dispute resolution, insolvency, property and insurance.

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We are accustomed to splitting trading into technical and fundamental buckets. Both involve crunching data; one set includes market fundamentals and the other pure price data. Alternative data is a third bucket that is gaining traction.